On Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch with the littles.
Amy had so much climbing all over the place.
Then she went up these stairs to play on the raised platform.
But on the way back down, she fell a single step, and cried of pain. We were trying not to overreact, and gave her time to rest, played on the swings and pony rides… but no matter what we did, she wouldn’t bear weight. After about an hour, we realized that something was definitely wrong with her special leg and we headed to the nearest emergency room.
In the ER, I was immediately treated like a helicopter parent. When I told them that she’d only fallen down a single step, and she appeared to be in no pain and perfectly fine, they pretty much figured I was crazy. I tried explaining about her special leg, and pseudarthrosis, but none of the doctors had any idea what pseudarthrosis was.
Luckily for us, the ER was pretty much empty. So when they saw we weren’t going to go away, they went ahead and did an x-ray. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for that radiologist, her x-ray is pretty gnarly. Because it was so crazy looking he didn’t even know what he was looking at. With nothing to compare it to, he had a hard time being certain whether there was a fracture or not. I actually ended up pulling up a picture of her x-ray on Facebook to text to the radiologist so that he could compare the two. With this information, he told us that she had fractured her special leg. 
With impending surgery (and a lot of fear!) in our hearts and minds, we returned to Shriners, but couldn’t be seen yesterday, as Dr. Kulkarni was in surgery. But we left the CD with her x-rays behind.
A few hours later, I received a phone call from Dr. Kulkarni himself. He wanted to let me know that he looked at her x-rays and that she had absolutely no fracture, in fact, there was no change at all. So that was quite a relief! Then he told me that since there was no fracture, there was no need for us to come in. I explained to him that while I was relieved, I still very much wanted to come in because she was obviously hurt and wasn’t bearing any weight. He assured me that there was no fracture, so there was no reason that I couldn’t let her walk. This made absolutely no sense to me. I explained that I wasn’t KEEPING her from walking, that she was REFUSING to walk, because of pain, or some other reason that I couldn’t pinpoint. As she was refusing to weight bear and that I was very concerned that something was very wrong.
Three more times over the course of this one phone call he told me that I should let her walk, and three times more during this one phone call I explained that she was physically unable to walk. The call finally ended when he exasperatingly agreed to see us the next day. I was not a happy mama.
We returned again today, and after a through exam of her leg, and double checking her x-rays, he had firmly declared that there is no break he can see, which is WONDERFUL! However, she still has pain, and had been unable to bear any weight for 3 days at this point. Dr. Kulkarni tried to trick her into walking by having her chase a ball, but she dropped to all fours and crawled after it. See? She WON’T walk.
His response was to ask if she had walked at all since getting her brace. I told him she had started walking the same day. Then he asked me if I was SURE she was walking. Was I sure? Was he kidding? So I pulled out my phone and showed him this video that I had taken a few weeks back.
Then he finally seemed to believe me that my child could walk. Unbelievable.
So, now she’s in a cast. She’ll be in this sparkly cast (#6) for about 4 weeks, and then we’ll transition back to her brace. Hopefully she’ll be up and walking soon!
In the meantime, I’m getting a referral to another doctor. If he won’t even believe me when I say my kid can walk, how can he be my partner when it counts? I don’t know what his problem with me is, but I NEVER want to see this doctor again!
I still have that appointment with Dr. Boakes in January, but Amy can’t wait that long. I’m starting the process to get a second opinion from the Stanford doctor. From what I read, he’s all about hips, and cerebral palsy- so I’m not sure he’ll be a good fit. But my Facebook friend seems very insistent that I’ll like him, so we’ll give him a shot. His name is Dr. Scott Hoffinger. What do we have to lose?
